Her eyes snapped sword-sharp with irritation. “If you’d controlled your temper—words I never thought I’d have to say to you—you would’ve been there to hear the news at the same time I did. Then you had to dash yourself brainless against a shapeshifter and we had a lot of old secrets to clear off the table, which was also your doing. Don’t second-guess me in this, Harlan.”
I took a breath and let it go. “Fine. What does this communication from my esteemed brother offer?” I knew what it would be, from Inga’s hints, in my bones—from knowing my family so well, perhaps—and only needed to hear the words.
“It contains an offer of alliance. A marriage of state, between me and your brother Ban.”
And there it was. It almost didn’t hurt, I’d been braced for that particular blow for so long. “Don’t accept Ban,” I told her. “He’s never been right in the head. Hold out for Mykal, or one of the twins.”
She gaped at me. I didn’t often catch Ursula flat-footed. Sadly I couldn’t enjoy it this time. Determinedly I bit into a leg of meat, chewing, counting the beats of silence until the explosion.
“That’s your response.” She was entirely astonished—and quiet with it. I would’ve preferred the explosion.
“Yes—the best advice I can give. Ban was born wrong. He’s fine in body, but not all there in his mind. Though that might be useful for your purposes.” As soon as the words escaped my mouth, I regretted them. So much for keeping my cool.
“I don’t deserve that,” she said quietly.
“No.” I blew out a breath. “I apologize. Though offering you Ban is an insult. Mykal or one of the twins would be more fitting for you to marry.”
“Harlan. I’m not marrying any of them.”
“What did Hestar offer?”
“What?”
I wiped the grease from my hands, giving her a knowing look. “A marriage of alliance with Dasnaria gets what for the High Throne of the Thirteen Kingdoms?” I phrased it deliberately, if unfairly prodding her, emphasizing where we both knew her responsibilities lay.
“Independent ally of the empire,” she replied, eyeing me. “One hundred years of that status, with options to renegotiate. Protection from the Temple of Deyrr.”
“A good offer,” I acknowledged. “Better than I expected.”
“If Hestar doesn’t renege.”
“He won’t. Not on the letter of the agreement. Konyngrrs revere a good contract.” I smiled at her in reminder of the Vervaldr’s initial contract, how Ursula had pored over it, looking for loopholes, and how she hadn’t believed at first that I’d written it. But she didn’t smile at the old joke.
“And Deyrr?” she asked pointedly.
I lifted a shoulder and let it fall, contemplating. If I focused on the politics, I could set emotion aside. Giving Ursula advice was part of supporting her as I’d sworn to do. “I imagine Hestar will be very careful of exactly what he promises regarding Deyrr. From what we know of the movements of the High Priestess and the previous actions of the temple, I doubt Hestar has as much control there as he’d like. It’s entirely possible this offer is a sign that he recognizes he needs this alliance—and your assistance—to tear Deyrr from his own throat.”
“What possible assistance can I offer the Empire of Dasnaria?”
“You rule Annfwn,” I pointed out. “The Tala are the descendants of n’Andana, ancient enemy of Deyrr. Arguably a successful enemy, as they made the deciding move in their long war by taking magic out of circulation and starving Deyrr of magic. In Hestar’s place, who else would you bet on to contain Deyrr other than the people who did it before?”
She had an arrested look on her face, thinking through the ramifications, then wrinkled her nose. “Logical, except I don’t actually rule Annfwn. Even Andi and Rayfe are hard-pressed to govern that lot of anarchists and iconoclasts.”
Though I appreciated her attempt at levity, I didn’t take the distraction. “Hestar doesn’t know that. Something has pushed him to this point and it’s an opportunity you can’t afford to pass up.”
Fury crossed her face like a summer squall, quickly passing. “How can you suggest that so calmly?”
I only wished I felt calm inside, but I could present the façade to ease this for her. Sliding a fruit tart onto her plate, I bit into one of my own. Fresh strawberries, first of the season, and a fair amount of sour with the sweet. “We always knew this day would come,” I said after swallowing, since she’d left the question out there for me to answer, staring me down. “You’ve known all your life that part of being heir to the High Throne meant making a marriage of state.”
“That changed for me when I committed to being with you,” she replied, an edge to her voice. “I’ve told you that countless times.”
“Essla.” I set down the tart and took her hand. It lay limp and cold in mine, nothing there for me to grasp. “The Elskastholrr is about me and my own internal compass. Nothing changed for you. Your loyalty has always been to the High Throne first, as it has to be. You said as much this morning.”
“I was angry.”
“Yes, but you also know it’s true.”
“I don’t know that.”
“Oh, will you abdicate then? Step down and hand over responsibility for your Thirteen Kingdoms to… well, let’s see.” I pretended to think, letting go of her hand to cross my arms and rub my chin thoughtfully. “Andi is next in line, but she’s preoccupied with defending Annfwn and we need her there as she’s our best sorceress. Never mind the political unrest it would cause, putting a shapeshifting sorceress on the High Throne. Then there’s Ami, who’s come a long way but would be the first to tell everyone she’s not equipped to be High Queen—and who you noted won’t be pried out of her cozy nest in Windroven. Astar is your official heir, of course, but I’m not sure a toddler on the throne during a time of war is a good—”
“Just stop it,” she cut me off, scowling. “Do you always have to be so thriced logical about every Danu-cursed thing?”
“Yes.” I took up my strawberry tart again, savoring the sweet that came with the sour. “I do, because you’re the passionate one in this relationship. You are the fiery blade while I’m the cool water of reason.”
She narrowed her eyes at me. “Says he who declared I’d unleashed the dragon and promised to eat me alive.”
I waved that away. “That was sex.”
“And who came close to killing his brother this morning.”
“A temporary lapse.”
“Who was passionate enough to save his sister and gave up everything to start a new and better life.”
“She gave up her life,” I answered. “She gave up everything. How could I do less?”
Ursula sat back, weary, grief in her eyes. “Harlan—how can you want me to marry another man, your own brother?”
“All I want is to do my best by you, and you need to do your best by your realm. That means accepting this alliance. You’d be marrying into the imperial family of the Dasnarian Empire, gaining a century of reprieve and very likely averting a war. That is a service to the High Throne that will save countless lives and bloodshed. There really isn’t a question here of what you should do.”
“I could marry you,” she pointed out. “You’re full brother to the emperor.”
“No, I’m not. I was disinherited, stripped of rank. In the eyes of my family, I no longer exist.”
“If I’m married to you, and they want this alliance, they might reconsider that.”
Unfamiliar bitterness rose along with my gorge and I regretted drinking so much wine earlier. “I wouldn’t have them,” I bit out.
“Not even for me?” she asked, cagey now, neatly boxing me in. “You say you’ll do whatever I need, but you won’t take back a title that matters nothing to you? Won’t take the opportunity for them to restore what’s rightfully yours, something they should never have taken from you, particularly since you acted only in the best interests of another member of the family?” Ursula tipped her h
ead in thought. “I wonder what Jenna would say you should do?”
I stared at her, astounded. Flummoxed. She’d outmaneuvered me again and I’d never seen it coming. If only I could go back to bed and magically start this entire day anew. “This is why you wanted the story about my eldest sister before you told me about the marriage offer.”
She smiled thinly. “You’re not the only one who’s learned a few things about managing an obstinate spouse.”
“I am not your spouse, hawk,” I ground out.
“Oh, rabbit, you most surely are. All that’s lacking is the actual contract and I happen to know you’ve a deft hand with those.” She raised her brows as she scored the point, letting me know she hadn’t missed my earlier reference to that.
“A missing contract creates a rather large hole.”
“Easily fixed. You’re going to marry me, Harlan, tonight. Your brother will stand witness for you and Zynda for me. Then Kral can deliver the news to Hestar that I’m fortuitously already married to a Prince of Dasnaria, and we can hammer out an agreement of alliance.”
I had no words. “Ursula. I—”
I don’t know what I would’ve said, because the lookout’s alarm shout and the pealing of the warning bells—straight to second-level alarm—dashed everything else from my mind.
Chapter Thirteen
Both on our feet in the same movement, we grabbed the weapons we always kept at hand as we dashed through her rooms and into the hall. Side by side, we ran through the arcade and her private courtyard, taking the shortcut to the walls, her innate speed making up for my longer stride.
A roaring shadow passed over us, an inferno of flame heating the summer air to crackling. Zynda in dragon form, blazing a swath through the summer sky at an enemy I couldn’t see without stopping to scrutinize. Glad she was on top of our defense, and that I could recognize her now, I made a mental note to establish a system for us to warn of friendly dragon approach. It didn’t bear thinking what a dragon bent on destroying us could do.
Shouts over the cacophony of the alarm bells greeted us in the outer yard as Ursula’s protective guard formed around her. Other fighters streamed in from various quarters, some still buckling on weapons. “To the walls,” she commanded crisply.
I turned to her. “You know you should go to—”
She rounded on me with a vicious glare. “Don’t do this now. I’m done with being protected. This is my castle, my realm, and I’m done cowering indoors while you all fight for me.”
I reassessed, taken aback by her vehemence, then nodded and tapped the flat of my broadsword to my forehead. “Elskastholrr,” I told her, and she grinned, a feral baring of teeth.
“Damn straight.”
“Your Majesty!” The current gate commander dashed over. “Permission to close the gates?”
We exchanged a glance. The alarm bells had been ringing only a minute or so. “Do we have people outside still making for the castle?” she asked.
“Yes, but—”
“Gates stay up until they’re all in,” she ordered, turning her back and running for the walls.
We climbed the ladders swiftly, taking in the scene. I couldn’t make much sense of what I saw at first. Smoke rose from the fields and orchards, thick and unnaturally coiling, dimming the air and swarming over people on the road—running either for the safety of town or the castle walls—or over people lying immobile. Zynda the dragon turned on wingtip—which seemed to bring her dangerously close to the ground—her silhouette against the afternoon sun very nearly vertical in the sky, Marskal clearly outlined on her back.
Brant ran up to us, out of breath. “Captain!” For a moment I didn’t know if he meant me or if he’d reverted to the Hawks’ habit of calling Ursula “captain.” In the heat of the fight, it didn’t matter. “Attack by unknown entities.”
“Be more specific,” Ursula snapped, eyes on the scene, also scanning.
Was the smoke…feeding on the people who were down? Clouds of it coalesced around their fallen forms, while other masses seemed more condensed, taking shape. They seemed almost humanoid, except terribly distorted, with missing limbs in places, appendages in others that looked more animal. Or like nothing natural at all.
“Can’t.” Brant replied. “Looks like smoke, but with particles like ash. Drops people where they stand. We can’t pinpoint the source and—”
I swore, viciously, and they both turned to me in expectation. “Ash,” I spat out. “Curse us for worse than fools. Those places are where we scattered the ashes of the unidentified dead.”
When they stared blankly, I clarified. “After Illyria’s defeat, all of the people she converted with her Deyrr magic—we burned them when the pieces kept coming.”
“I remember that,” Ursula said. Brant nodded, though he hadn’t been one of the Hawks then. It had been terrible, soul-crushing duty and my Vervaldr, with the great gift of not recognizing most of the victims as friends and family, had handled the bulk of it.
“Some victims were identified and their ashes taken home to family graveyards.” I waved my broadsword at the unusually fertile fields and orchards this summer. “The rest we spread on the tilled earth, as is traditional in Dasnaria. Stupid and shortsighted.”
Ursula spun to survey the area. Zynda dove and flew so low she could only glide, as a downstroke of her wings would hit ground. “You’re saying that smoke is the undead ash, rising again?”
“The remains are still coming,” I replied grimly. “Even as ash. Unforgivably stupid of me to keep it so near the castle.”
“My people would have done the same,” she replied absently, attention keen on the people fleeing the attacking smoke. Assisted by squads of Ordnung troops, some of the people on the road had unharnessed their horses from the laden wagons, riding full speed for the castle gates. A group of young women in pretty gowns ran, ribbons streaming. One lost her hat and it flew to the road behind her. She started to turn, but a soldier passing her on horseback shouted and pointed at the gates, then charged a cloud of smoke that had descended on the hat. “Ashes to earth, the cycle of life,” Ursula added.
“Only this ash has nothing of life in it,” I observed.
“What of the people down—what does the smoke do?”
“Near as we can tell it suffocates them,” Brant answered. “Before they drop, it seems like they can’t breathe.”
“Does anything stop it?” she asked, her gaze on her fallen people. The soldier who’d charged the cloud of smoke was in trouble, he and the horse spinning as the smoke raked them with claws that should’ve been insubstantial but had them convulsing.
“Nothing so far,” Brant answered. “Weapons pass through it.”
Ursula dug her fingers into the parapet as she leaned over, clearly wishing to leap over it and into the fight. “All advancing on Ordnung. The walls won’t keep it out.”
“No, Your Majesty.”
“Dragon fire might do it,” I said, pointing as Zynda came around. She spouted a blast of flame through a cloud of ash where there weren’t any people. We all leaned forward to watch. The ash disappeared in the flame, but in the wake of her passage, the air eddied with oily black shadows, the ash condensing again into coils, then into humanoid shape—and continued to move toward the castle.
“No good,” Ursula murmured. “Why this, why today?”
“Does it matter?” Brant muttered darkly.
“It might. This is magic. You fight magic with magic. The ash has been there since last autumn. Why did it wake today?”
“It’s midsummer,” Kelleah said. She returned our surprised gazes with imperturbable calm. Of course she would’ve come to the walls, in case anyone needed her healing skills, not knowing we had nothing to fight. Would she be able to help the fallen? We’d have to retrieve them first, risking more of us.
“Midsummer,” Ursula echoed, realization in her voice.
“You call it the Feast of Danu, and Danu is your goddess, not mine,” Kelleah supplied
, a pointed reminder.
Ursula had discussed—and quickly dismissed—celebrating the Feast of Danu, but the holiday had fallen out of fashion with the population under Uorsin’s rule. He’d promoted worship of Glorianna and Her church as the primary religion for the Twelve Kingdoms. With so much else to do and really no one to champion the event, any thoughts of celebrating Danu’s Day at midsummer had faded before they’d fully formed.
“But even in Annfwn we observe the longest day of the year,” Kelleah noted. “As it’s a day full of the potent magic of life.”
“Enough to raise the undead,” Ursula murmured, eyes still on the running women. Mounted soldiers had picked up two, but three others still jogged slowly, hampered by their pretty summer gowns. “The question is how do we put them to rest again?”
I measured the distance with her, and the relentless pace of the smoke creatures, many of them congealing into shape now. They’d soon reach the castle. How do you wall out something like that? Unless we could find a way to nullify it, the stuff would slowly suffocate everyone in Ordnung.
“We can’t put them to rest,” I realized. Ursula glanced over at my abrupt tone. “The ash has to be utterly destroyed,” I told her. “Here and everywhere.”
She blanched, swiftly following my meaning, then turned to one of her guard who also ran messages. “Have Shua draft a proclamation, short, as many copies as possible to be distributed throughout Mohraya as quickly as possible, and then beyond. Any ashes of victims of Illyria that have been buried, scattered, sealed in crypts or urns—whatever it might be—should be avoided or kept locked away. Anyone in possession of these remains should notify Ordnung so we can deal with it.”
The guard took off at a dead run and everyone looked at Ursula expectantly for the solution. She looked to me. I had nothing.
“Zynda can magic it away. I’ve seen it,” Jepp said, arriving out of breath with Kral behind her. He met my gaze steadily, tossing me an ironic salute, gaze going to the scene below and eyes widening in incredulity.
Seasons of Sorcery Page 37
